Navigating the Flow of a Crisis: Service Management’s Response in a COVID-19 World

With growing concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic, Cherwell continues to focus on the health and well-being of our employees, customers, and the Cherwell community. We have, and will always have, a culture of service; and when the community is hurting, we aim to help.

This current crisis is not just about health. For many of us with the good fortune to be able to continue our work remotely, this situation has given rise to new challenges as technology leaders. With remote work trend already on the rise, the mandates for social distancing, office closures and restricted travel have made virtual work and collaboration essential, not optional.  

Many of our customers, from healthcare and higher education to manufacturing industries alike, are utilizing service management during COVID-19 to help their employees’ and end-users’ transition to remote work during this crisis.

 “Since we have more than 500 users now logging in from remote spots, our monitoring is alerting us to many new and risky IP login attempts. We track these in Cherwell to make sure each is handled and validated properly,” shares an IT manager customer responsible for a multibillion-dollar manufacturer with worldwide operations.

Another customer, Chris Chagnon, in higher education says, “We have been rapidly scaling up our support practices to enable remote workers and remote classes, and part of that has been rethinking our approach to customer service and the customer experience of using tools remotely. Using Cherwell, we have been able to help people nationally without much need for big changes.”

We understand that many of our customers require more at a time like this, whether it’s additional licenses to support the growing remote work need or a new integration. We have developed a temporary expansion pack for CSM licenses to allow for an increased remote workforce.

Also, many of our Technology Alliance Partners that integrate with our software are more than prepared to handle crisis management and the global move to remote work. Partners such as BeyondTrust integrates with Cherwell through their remote support solution to enable IT workers to support end-users from afar. The details from each session automatically update the ticket in Cherwell, keeping Cherwell as your single source of truth. BeyondTrust is also offering a limited number of free remote support licenses for 90 days for companies requiring additional licenses during this unprecedented time of remote working.

Everbridge developed a mergeable application (mApp)—the Everbridge Cherwell Connector—that helps customers streamline their incident response as a whole and accelerate their resolutions. The mApp allows customers to engage the right IT staff in a digital war room within five minutes or less.

There are more than 120 additional mApps in our recently announced Cherwell Marketplace that our customers can apply to their business needs during this time.

Our People and Partners

We are committed to taking all actions necessary to continue to protect the safety and health of our employees and our customers. Like many of our peers and others around the nation and the world, we have implemented travel bans and canceling in-person conferences and events. Our Clear 2020 Europe conference is being re-envisioned. (Stay tuned for more information to come on our virtual event!)

Below you will find more resources to empower the community during this difficult time.

Additional Resources

• Remote Work Resources: As remote workers increase (and remote work may be a permanent addition!), there are many resources available to help your organization tackle the needs of your enterprise. It’s becoming somewhat of a work from home revolution, with VPN usage in the United States alone already growing by 53 percent between March 9-15. Providing regular communication outlets for employees, especially capitalizing on video conferencing, can help ensure projects are in sync and can help mitigate the social/professional isolation that some workers may be experiencing these next few weeks.

• Please visit the Cherwell Marketplace for mApps that can further support your crisis needs or visit the Cherwell Support portal if you are in need of assistance. 
• Coming soon, we'll make available two new mApps to help organizations navigate this situation. You can expect a Remote Employee Management mApp to streamline process and for IT requests from afar. Additionally, a Crisis Management mApp will enable employees to self-report and give managers analytics and reporting.
• Additionally, check out how some of the world’s largest companies are tackling the remote work issue.

• Crisis Management for Businesses: Many businesses are successfully navigating today’s current crisis. In the technology world, we have seen various tech giants approaching crisis management in rather creative ways including: Google’s nationwide website build, and Facebook/Twitter’s response to misinformation spreading. If you’re a smaller business needing guidance during this time, we invite you to read up on the Small Business Administration’s website for additional resources on crisis management.
• COVID-19 Resources: Finally, there have been countless resources shared around how best to handle COVID-19. For the most updated facts and statistics, please visit the World Health Organization. There are many actions and safety precautions you can also take to protect yourself.
• Please visit our Corporate Social Responsibility page to learn more about our community involvement efforts. Additionally, we are also actively encouraging donations to the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 Response Fund. We understand that crises such as COVID-19 create uncertainty and concern, and our team is fully prepared to do all that we can to support our communities. As always, we aim to lead our community through this crisis with our four values of heart, hunger, humility, and honesty.

You can read our full response to COVID-19 on our announcements page. Stay well, everyone!